"FREE TRANSPORT."
IS it quite so certain, as most of our business contemporaries assume, that the remarkable lull in British enterprise, which has now lasted three entire years, is entirely due to the failure of Messrs. Overend Gurney and Co. ? It is true the shock to confidence given by that failure was very great, and the shock to the most popular method of doing business, namely, through Joint-Stock Associations, was still greater ; but the effect has lasted a very long while. Capitalists ought by this time to have picked up a little courage, and be ready, at all events, to think of the possibility of at some future time commencing new enterprises, but as far as we can see, this needful revival is as far off as ever. True, there is plenty of business doing, though the clothing trades are in a bad way, the cotton manu- facture especially suffering ; but still there is an absence of the usual improvement, a tendency to remain stationary, a slack- ness in almost every department, which must be discouraging to financiers, and which tends to increase greatly the permanent pressure of pauperism on our resources. The gradual increase of buoyancy which has usually followed a severe commercial storm has this time been long delayed, and there are few, if any, signs that it is near at hand. Is it not just possible that it is not near at hand, that we are still on the edge of a long period of depression, during which the nation will not advance, will, so to speak, do only its daily work, and will hoard the resulting profit, or invest it in bonds brought over from America, or in foreign stocks, or in anything except the extension of a business which can only be slowly enlarged at the cost of a reduction of profit ? May not the nation have exhausted the energy derived in the first instance from the introduction of railways, and in the second from Free Trade, and be settling down into an attitude of quiescence waiting for the next great fillip ? -
We put our suggestion in the interrogative form advisedly, that it may be answered by statists more competent than our- selves ; but we cannot but believe that the lull is likely to endure, and that a fresh stimulus to trade, if it were possible that one should be given, would be in the highest degree acceptable to all business men. The point is to discover such a stimulus, and the search for it seems'at first sight rather a hopeless enterprise. Trade has very few new worlds to conquer all at once. We cannot compel foreign Governments, like those of Russia or the United States, to lower their tariffs if they do not choose, even though lowering them would be more for their advantage than our own ; or insist on more moderate duties in the Colonies, or press the Asiatic trade faster than the peoples can afford to buy. The key to improvement there is readier means of communication, and the Chinese seem clearly disinclined towards railways, or at least towards the railways we want, giving access to masses of population at present inaccessible ; while in India the work is advancing quite as fast as is financially safe. Egypt is pretty well exploite; trade in Turkey is dependent on a social security merchants cannot produce, and South America already takes all its limited population can consume. We do not see much hope of any very quick expansion of markets, and some fear in America and the Colonies of possible contraction. If we are to find a new impulse, we must find it, we suspect, at home, and Mr. Glad- stone has not left us much to do in the direction we have pursued for the last_ twenty years. If all duties, except on tobacco and alcohol, were abolished we should not, we suspect, gain very much, unless, indeed, it were in China, where demand must still be limitless, and where, if the tea duties were abolished, the people might have largely increased means of payment. We say might have, for it is not yet quite certain to what extent tea at a shilling a pound would be consumed in this country, though we admit the a priori probability of at least a double demand.
Still, we cannot have more reductions, except by the aid of more surpluses, a very gradual process, and we are casting around for a quicker one. There is, we believe, one, if we would only accept it, and it is the one already perceived by the American Abolitionists, who are now throwing their whole energy, the energy which extinguished slavery, into a programme quaintly described as 'Free Labour, Free Trade, and Free Transport." Free trade we have got, free labour we see every chance of getting, if Govern- ment and the Unions can come to a hearty agreement about suspending legislative coercion on Unions and Unionists' coercion on competition ; but to "Free Transport" nobody ever seems to give a serious thought. Yet we cannot but think that there lies in that curious phrase the possibility of a new development of commerce as great as the intro- duction of the railways themselves secured. Suppose, for instance, that it were possible to carry all goods and all business men throughout the United Kingdom for about one-fourth of the present rates, would not that be an im- mense stimulus to commercial movement ? We believe it would do more for us than the discovery of a new con- tinent, that it would not only make every existing external trade much larger and more profitable, not only treble the internal trade to which statists never devote sufficient atten- tion, but develop trades as yet unknown, trades arrested or stifled by difficulty and cost of transport. Statists of eminence say that we could make this change if all the rail- ways were in one hand, and were worked, not with a view to profit, but with a single eye to the benefit of the community by a vast increase in its power of transport. Mr. Bright is believed to be opposed to any plan for giving the State the railways ; but has he ever looked at the subject carefully from this point of view,—the possible increase of trading power given to every section of the community by "free transport," that is, transport at the lowest possible rates ; has he ever regarded free railways as, in fact, a neces-
sary complement and logical result of free trade ? The project has always been hitherto considered as one by which the State might profit, and so lighten taxation ; but it has this other and still more important side, that through it we might do again for commerce and manufactures all that Stephenson's great achievement originally did for them, might repeat a process which has once so immensely increased our wealth. The absolute certainty of the conclusion, supposing the data established, is, we imagine, past any serious question. If the railways increased traffic, cheap railways must also in- crease it ; not, indeed, in full proportion, because no reduction of price could quite equal the difference between road and railway transport, but still to an extent which would appre- ciably affect the general prosperity of the people. And that the data are correct, no one who studies Mr. Gait's and Mr. Wheeler's books with an open mind can fail to be convinced. Both of them think a great deal too much about the Treasury, both of them shrink from prophecies in which they yet evidently believe, but the two leave, in our minds, this irresistible conclusion. It is possible, were the State to assume all the railways, giving proprietors, say, ten per cent. on present prices, to give as great a stimulus to the internal traffic of Great Britain as the Railways themselves ever gave. If only half of that statement is true, or only a tenth, it is surely as well worth the attention of Northern Chambers of Commerce as any conceivable plan for seating their representatives in the Council at the India House. "Free Transport," we venture to predict, will yet be as loud and imperative a cry in Great Britain as Free Trade.
Previous page
